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Commentary: Irresponsible Hypocrisy-Hate Hype Anthem - Transcript
The video starts with the song *PLEASE FILL IN* playing in the background while Akriloth gives a disclaimer reading: I do not endorse any organized verbal attack towards this user. Anything I say and do is for the purposes of having fun and taking potshots through legitimate critique, which is not a form of bullying or harassment. My usage of the video is protected under Section 107© of US Copyright law known as “Fair Use”, due to me using the content for the purpose of commentary and criticism. The video then begins with Akriloth introducing the video while footage from the game Hand of Fate 2 is playing in the background. The music also changes to *PLEASE FILL IN*. Akriloth: I wake up one Sunday morning to find a message in my inbox from Michael Schomer, and hey, what do you know, it’s a request for material! Sure, why not? I sit down to watch the video; a 9-minute video from a user by the name of Time Lord of Gotham on ChangeTheChannel. I went in expecting something that would at least make my eyes roll. What I wound up with was one of the worst videos I have ever seen on ChangeTheChannel, and to put that in perspective, the competition includes a conspiracy theorist who attempted to have himself erased from a wiki and subsequently failed to understand the Streisand effect, and a bitter, increasingly irrelevant YouTube reviewer who laughs at shooting victims. When you’re on the same scale of quality as those people in terms of making a bad ChangeTheChannel video, you done fucked it! While talking about Professor Kuhtoons (the conspiracy theorist), Akriloth shows an image of Kuhtoons sticking out his middle finger, and when talking about Asalieri (the YouTube reviewer), he shows a picture of Asalieri, and then proceeds to show a tweet from him reading: "so stop me if you heard this joke... a muslim, vegan woman walks into youtube headquarters... hehehehehhHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh man, I know I should feel bad for these people, but... HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHA". Time Lord of Gotham: Now, for those who watch my channel, you know that I'm not one that normally gets all wrapped up in the hype of something, whether positive or negative. You know, whether people are really liking something or really hating something. Even if I do a video on it, if you listen to what I say in the context of the video, it's not me "hyping", it's more me talking about said hype. Akriloth: This... doesn't make any sense. You don't get involved in the hype, but you merely discuss it? Which, by nature involves immersing you in it to some degree. I mean, regardless of what degree of hypocrisy that embodies, I can tell from glancing through your video list exactly how insincere of a qualifier that is. I mean, shit, your last video before this one was a rallying cry against Disney for the firing of James Gunn; a noble cause, don't get me wrong, but we'll get back to him; and in the weeks before that, you put up a video gloating over the backlash against the She-Ra redesign, along with a video on how bronies are weird that would have been absolutely outrageous circa-2011. If all of that isn't a form of participating in hyped up topical internet backlash, then I have no idea what is. Akriloth plays a skip card showing *PLEASE FILL IN* while *PLEASE FILL IN* plays. Time Lord of Gotham (sped-up by Akriloth): So, in To Boldly Flee, uh, which was shit, all the Nostalgia Critic movies are shit, I'm pretty sure he knows that, but I'll get to that. Uh, in it, it's implied that Linkara, you know, the Star Trek guy who kinda sounds like this (TLoG attempts an impression of Linkara). I always just thought of him as more like a- like a Cleveland- like a white Cleveland, just being like "You are wrong about Star Trek!" (TLoG goes back to his normal voice) That's nothing like what he sounds like. I'm sorry, I can't impersonate him. He's got such a distinct voice. It's like Chris Griffin, I can't do that. Um, I can do Stewie, though. That's rather fun. Oh, right! (Akriloth stops speeding up TLoG's video now) Anyways, it's implied that he... rapes the Nostalgia Chick... offscreen. Now, the joke being in bad taste aside, rape jokes can be funny. If pedophile jokes can be funny, rape jokes can be funny. What's the difference between a pedophile and a rapist? *snaps fingers* Age. That's it. That's fucking it. Hello. Uh, you know, you can make jokes about anything- I believe you can make jokes about anything, which is why I find this all hypocritical. James Gunn makes THOUSANDS of tweets about being a pedophile, they make one fucking joke about rape- CHANGE THE CHANNEL! FIRE THE NOSTALGIA CRITIC! Like, alright, everyone, chill the fuck out, okay. Akriloth: Oh wow, very first attempt at hypocrisy jabbing and you've completely fallen at the first hurdle! See, what nowadays stops me from calling out hypocrisy in inappropriate places is asking myself if there are any meaningful differences between the two compared situations that would account for the supposed double standard. Lookie lookie, there's a shit-ton of stuff you had to conveniently ignore in order to paint this as hypocrisy! Shall I start with the fact that James Gunn's tweets were the only factor in his firing, while the rape joke in To Boldly Flee was part of a long list of grievances in the people's decision to stop supporting Channel Awesome? Hell, you even mention one of them later on in this video, so I have no idea how you could miss it THAT badly! How about the fact that James Gunn actually showed that he wanted to move on from the tweets in question and better himself as a person, while the Channel Awesome machine kept struggling along with only three members remaining, expecting normies not to notice or dismiss their string of non-apologies. How about the fact that ChangeTheChannel was spearheaded by several people who were wronged by the company and wanted to raise awareness of genuinely terrible business practices, while the James Gunn firing happened because of an alt-right conspiracy nutter with an axe to grind. Golly gee willikers, a different situation being treated differently! Who'da thunk it? Time Lord of Gotham: Like, apparently, on some of the shoots, they didn't have enough water. Next- If you're going to go- If I'm going to the fucking desert, even if I'm going to film, and I expect there to be food and water, *snaps fingers* I'm bringing water! You know why? I'm a thinker! I'm a preparer! I'm a survivor! I am a- Akriloth interrupts the song with a sound effect and the word "bad" in green and in the Comic Sans font. You know- like- I mean, think for your fucking self. Do your own fucking shit. I mean, it's not fucking Hollywood, it's a bunch of sweaty-ass fucking nerds in the desert! Bring some water, little girl! Akriloth: Okay, NO. I went back through the Not So Awesome Google Doc to find what you were referring to, and I found the following: Page 9, Obscurus Lupa brings up how ChannelAwesome had to be told to have water on set; Page 38, Suede recalls that during the filming of Suburban Nights, the producers were mocked for wanting water on set; Page 64, Lindsay Ellis brings up how one of the anniversary shoots didn't bring water in until day two of filming, and clarifies that this was out of arrogance rather than inexperience; and Page 70, Ian Liz brings up how there was no water in the Suburban Nights shooting. I'm sorry, how could your recollection of the situation be this grossly disingenuous!? The issue clearly isn't that there wasn't enough water, so much as it was neglecting to bring it in the first place! When the basic expectation is that the producer is gonna provide for the people that they supposedly pay, then of course it's going to be kind of a big deal when they don't, since it demonstrates that they clearly don't care about the well being of those who are, at the end of the day, their employees. I found all that through a simple Ctrl+F of the Not So Awesome Google Doc, this wasn't even difficult for me! I'm particularly disgusted by you bringing up the notion of "just bring your own," along with your shpeal about "a bunch of sweaty nerds in the desert," when a shooting set is still a shooting set, regardless of the project's scope. This smacks of ignorance at best, especially considering the number of days they were out shooting, and borderline victim blaming at worst. Take your tone-deaf destiny's child karaoke and shove it! I'm skipping the segment on how ChangeTheChannel supposedly "brought out all the haters," because not only is his overall point irrelevant to the topic of ChangeThe Channel, but the only criticism I could really offer is a simple "citation needed." I can't really expect any more from someone clearly without a script, but still... Akriloth plays a skip card using the same format as his previous one. Time Lord of Gotham: It's like a lot of these people who are talking a bunch of shit... *TLoG picks up a smoking pipe in the background* They mentioned that, you know, "at one point, I wanted to work with the Nostalgia Critic." Oh, and then he made a rape joke, oh no! Like, are you fucking kidding me? Akriloth: I suspect they would be if THAT'S what you took away from the situation. I again reiterate the rape joke was only a tiny segment of seventy-three pages worth of grievances that resulted in a mass exodus of producers from the site. Now, you could argue that you didn't have the patience to comb through that much of an info dump, and fair enough, but, couldn't you have at least glimpsed some of the allegations and noticed that they were way more than just "a bunch of people outraged over a rape joke," as evidenced by the fact that you also bring up the water thing? Your hypocrisy jab is built on speculation on people's thoughts, so why should anyone take your allegations as credible, anyway? I've no way of confirming if the people you're talking about are even real, and not just a strawman you came up with so you had something to bellyache about. Hell, your very next statement even lends credence to the fact that you only made this video to complain. Time Lord of Gotham (voice pitched up by Akriloth): Are you actually fucking kidding me? Oh my god. Woo. That felt great. I love a good rant, you know. I just love a little... a little- little good- uhh. Woo. It's all out, wow. Feels good. Akriloth: I suppose finding something to take your violent urges out on is easy when your punching bag is completely inanimate. Akriloth plays his skip card again, this time with text that reads: "He rambles on about how his online ranting demeanour is not like him in real life. Believe me, you're not missing anything." Time Lord of Gotham: Oh, but no, James Gunn, you know, it's like "oh no, he made Guardians of the Galaxy better." I got it. It's- It's a- It's a group effort. Making movies is a group effort. I'm sure one writer isn't going to change anything, and if his best jokes are about fucking children, I think the franchise will do good without him. Akriloth: Implying that anyone has ever considered the rape jokes to be the best he has. Implying that the content of the jokes were what people were even mad about. Implying that he was only involved in the writing side of things, and not, oh I don't know, the director's chair? What the bloodstained catholic hell does this have to do with anything? If this is just more buildup for the next sublime hypocrisy jab, then that's six minutes of my life I'll never get back. Oh yeah, six minutes. Of a nine minute video. I know, even I was stunned by how little there was to this video to the point that we're already two thirds of the way through. Time Lord of Gotham: Now people are saying: "Oh this is a political thing, you know. The right-wingers, the right-wingers, the right-wingers, they're- they're attacking." Who fucking cares? What power does he have in politics? None. I don't give a shit, man. Akriloth: As if I wasn't already convinced that you simply didn't understand the situation. What, did you hear people talking about Mike Cernovich specifically referencing the fact that he was an alt-right figure, then switched your brain off and assumed the whole thing was politically slanted in that sense of the term. Actually, considering how little you knew about ChangeTheChannel, that shouldn't have come as a surprise to me. The game footage pauses while Akriloth's avatar appears from the bottom of the screen. A green pause symbol also appears in the top right corner of the screen. During his post-point, *PLEASE FILL IN* plays in the background. HOLD UP. This just occurred to me as I was editing the video. You bring up the idea that Mike Cernovich doesn't have any power, neglecting to remember that it was him who brought attention to a bunch of really old tweets from James Gunn, had his followers signal-boost them, and then Disney caved in to that blatant act of cultural terrorism by firing Gunn on the basis of those alone, ignorant of both the fact that James Gunn apologized for the tweets and who Mike Cernovich even was. Need I remind you, this is the same person who spent so long pushing for a long-debunked conspiracy theory about a supposed child sex cultist breaking out of a pizza joint. The one nutter eventually took a gun to the place. So, uh, what power does Mike Cernovich have? More then he ideally should, evidently. During the last sentence, text appears on screen reading: "(unless you were referring to James Gunn, but that then falls back to the strawman issue from earlier.)" After the point, a green > symbol appears on the top right corner of the screen for a few seconds, and the game footage resumes. Skipping ahead a few minutes, since he goes off on a tangent about the hype surrounding M Night Shyamalan's next movie, and it's so off-topic it's tragically hilarious in it's own way, although I will show this part. Time Lord of Gotham: Samuel Jackson has been in great movies: Pulp Fiction and... During TLoG's silence, Akriloth plays the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme while the camera zooms in on TLoG's face. On the last note, an image of a person's face looking down at the viewer appears for a second. Akriloth: Isn't that just a summary of the care and effort put into this video in microcosm? Akriloth plays his skip card Time Lord of Gotham: I wasn't a part of this whole "I'm never going to watch them again!" Dude, their shit's funny. I love Tamara, I love Malcolm, I think Doug is a genuinely good person. Does he make some mistakes *coughs* based on how society has trained men? Sure. All men do. All men make mistakes. The background music changes to *PLEASE FILL IN* Akriloth: Oh, yes. God forbid a boycott have any actual sacrifice to it. Heaven forbid the overall quality of Doug Walker is irrelevant to people's grievances, or indeed Doug Walker himself, given how the majority of the issues surrounding Channel Awesome could be pointed at Mike Michaud, and that's coming from ME, a guy who's been skeptical about the effectiveness of boycotts since Radical Entertainment was downsized. If I'M championing the idea of a boycott, that's a bad sign! Time Lord of Gotham: But the thing is is that if you're not gonna be- gonna be willing to- uh... you know, have the same kind of reverence... for one thing... when the same thing is going on on the other side- I mean, if you- if you- if you are... (Akriloth starts to do the same zooming in gag from before while the Curb your Enthusiam theme starts to play, but TLoG starts talking again, halting the gag.) You can't tell your kid not to smoke weed when you got a pot tattoo tattooed on your fucking neck, you know? You just can't. Akriloth: Well, unless the tattoo came from a period in life that the father regrets and he can't afford to have it removed, so he's telling his kid to not smoke weed and end up making the same mistake in life choices that he did. I mean, even leaving aside the fact that this isn't the same kind of hypocrisy that you're trying to prove in the case of ChangeTheChannel and James Gunn, if the circumstances call for it, then that's not hypocrisy, that's speaking from experience. Hey, if you wanted to learn about the dangers of drinking too much, who would you sooner trust, an evangelical priest or a former alcoholic? See, this is what happens when your entire video is extended jabs at meaningless hypocrisy that never take into account any potentially important circumstances. Christ, at least when I made that mistake, I got some mildly amusing visual gags out of it. What do you have to show for it other than an anonymous Hogwarts Tardis? Time Lord of Gotham: You know, you can't be like "Oh, no, Doug, you can't make a rape joke, but this guy can make thousands of pedophile jokes!" Heeeey, he wants to fuck kids dressed like C-3PO, what the fuck!? (TLoG ignites his lighter and starts smoking from his smoking pipe.) Akriloth: Don't make me make another remark about the video in microcosm again! You're just trying to bait me at this stage! Time Lord of Gotham: But, yeah, no, I'm the asshole, I'm the Nazi bot on Twitter apparently, oh yeah. Yeah, I got accused of being a Twitter Nazi bot. The fuck does that even mean? You know bots are robots, right? That's where "bot" comes from, ro-BOT. Bot. (TLoG changes to a robotic voice as he exits stage left while doing the Nazi salute.) Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Seig Heil. Seig Heil. Seig Heil. Akriloth: Well, there goes my nonexistent monetization. Music changes to *PLEASE FILL IN* as Akriloth begins giving his final thoughts. Holland, what was ultimately the point of this video? I went in expecting to deeply comb the Not So Awesome document for deeper insight into the situation, and really dress down the disingenuous ramblings, but all I got was an unfocused, disjointed car crash where you desperately sniped around for utterly meaningless hypocrisy, went off on more than one irrelevant side-tangent, and repeatedly demonstrated that you somehow knew even less about the ChannelAwesome debacle than idiots like Asalieri. Take it from me, a guy who just over a year ago made the same mistake of making a video just to jab at alleged hypocrisies. This isn't gonna help. If anything, the only reason I can fathom for you making this video is to both vent perceived outrage and bind the last remaining dregs of hype that you claimed at the start of the video that you don't buy into. I won't say the video was without positives, I like the energy you occasionally showed, and you do have the right kind of entertaining voice and personality for this type of video. I can definitely see a good YouTuber in there somewhere, but if this is the approach you take to deconstructing a current event on the scale of ChangeTheChannel, umm... it needs work, to say the least. (Shows the clip of TLoG smoking again, this time zoomed in to focus on the smoking pipe.) Maybe start by not taking a drag mid-video. The screen changes to black with the word "FIN." in white on the screen, signalling the end of the video. Akriloth (singing to the tune of Because I Got High): I was calling out hypocrisy, but then I got high. (Ooo-ooo-ooo) I would have shown some honesty, but then I got high. (You light bastard.) I clearly cared as much as Asa, and I know why. (Why man? Yea-heh!) Because I got high, because I got high, because I got high. I would have read a script, but then I got high. (Fucker, you can't even read.) I could have been well-equipped, but I got high. (Hehehe, penis joke.) My rhetoric's all disjointed, and I know why. (Why man? Yea-heh!) Because I got high, because I got high, because I got high. (Go. Go. Go. Go.) I was gonna play the kazoo, but then I got high. (You're a sax player, motherfucker!) And perhaps the Swanee whistle, too, but I got high. (Hehe, too much. I'm sorry, I had to.) The kazoo is all I've got, and I know why. (Why man? Yea-heh!) Because I got high, because I got high, because I got high. (Go to the next one. Go to the next one. Go to the next one! Go to the next one!) I was gonna write more of this song, but I got high. (You lazy bastard!) I said I wouldn't hit the bun, nope I got high. (*smoking sound effect*) I don't know how to end this video, and I know why. (Why man? Yea-heh!) Because I don't consider myself a particularly good writer of ending punchlines and I would rather have fun doing whatever random shit I feel like doing in an uncannily structured manner. And I got high, because I got high, because I got high. At the last second of the video, an image of Kermit the Frog suddenly appears with a robotic "aaaaah" sound effect playing alongside it. Category:Transcripts